


Making It Better

by Joe_Reaves



Category: Primeval
Genre: First Time, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, S2 Ep 02, post-episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-11
Updated: 2010-04-11
Packaged: 2017-10-08 20:48:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/79383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joe_Reaves/pseuds/Joe_Reaves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After 2.02 Nick and Stephen patch things up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Making It Better

Nick smiled over at Stephen and squeezed his thigh. "Come on, let's get back to the ARC and get out of these clothes. I don't know about you but I could do without the worm slime."

Stephen grimaced. "Yeah. I think it's starting to set too." He looked over at the cars. "Want a ride? No point sliming up both cars. Connor could take yours back to the ARC."

"Thanks. Leave yours there and see if one of the minions will get it cleaned for you," Nick suggested. "I'll drive you home."

The ride back to the ARC was quiet, but a companionable silence, not like the strained quiet that had existed between them since Nick had come back through the anomaly. The fight against the worms had finished what the fight against the raptors and so presumably it hadn't been much different than in Stephen's memory. He wondered if Nick's version of him had secretly lusted after Nick the way he did.

Connor took one look at them and offered to do the report while they showered. Nick could sign it when they were done. Stephen suspected he just didn't want to have to smell them any longer. The slime was really developing an offensive odour as it dried.

Once the two of them were alone in the locker room, he looked over at Nick and laughed. "God, you look awful," he said.

"You're not exactly a bed of roses, Mr GQ," Nick mocked.

"I do not read GQ," he insisted, peeling his shirt over his head and dropping it onto the floor.

"Unless you have an invisible flatmate who collects them and hides them in your loo, I know you do," Nick grinned. "You forget I've spent several evenings at your place and I've seen your secrets."

"Not all of them," Stephen muttered, hurriedly getting out of the rest of his slimed clothes and looking at them sadly. "Remind me to only wear clothes I hate when we're monster hunting. They should be giving us a clothing allowance. I've lost track of the number of shirts that have been ripped to shreds, bled on, or irreparably slimed."

Nick sighed and added his own clothing to the pile. "Being a university professor was never meant to be this hard."

"And if you'd known that your job was going to involve this kind of thing .. you'd have signed on anyway," Stephen teased. "You love seeing the creatures. You think they're beautiful."

Nick turned the shower on and shoved his head under it, trying to get the remnants of the worms and their spores out of his hair. "Yep. And so would you. You love the danger. The thrill of the hunt."

Stephen grinned, showing his teeth. "We both like dangerous things, Nick."

Nick tilted his head. "Are we still talking about raptors or are we back onto my wife?"

Stephen winced. "It was a stupid mistake. If I could go back I wouldn't do it, but I can't."

"It's all right," Nick assured him. "I know and the last nine years have more than made up for it. If I had to pick one of you to lose ... well, we both made our choice didn't we? She left and we stayed here."

Stephen slipped and grabbed the wall to steady himself. Nick did not just mean he'd choose him over Helen, not in the way his libido was interpreting it anyway; he just meant their friendship was more important than a wife who would cheat on him and then disappear for eight years without a single message to say she was still alive.

"I can't trust her," Stephen said. "It's one thing to see her here but to go with her into a dangerous past?" He pasted what he hoped was a cheeky grin onto his face. "I only trust you to watch my back." He paused. "Besides, she left me to die when that millipede attacked me. She's nuts if she thought I'd just ignore that. She left me to die and you nearly got killed saving me."

Nick nodded as if he'd just made a decision, but if he had he wasn't telling Stephen what it was and how the hell had he ended up here, naked, in a shower, discussing the woman they'd both slept with.

"You're pretty banged up," Nick said, apparently changing the subject. "You should see the doctor." Stephen made a face at that; he hated the ARC's doctors. "Or you can come back to my place and I'll pull out my first aid kit and I'll treat them for you. Your choice, but someone needs to look at the cuts."

"As long as you let me, do you too," Stephen said, flushing when he realised how that sounded. "I mean you've got cuts too. I can look at them."

Nick smiled slowly, the same predatory smile Helen used to get, and Stephen swallowed heavily. "I'm willing to let you do me as long as I can do you first," Nick drawled.

The drive from the ARC to Nick's place was as silent as the trip to the ARC had been, but this time the silence was charged with something that Stephen couldn't quite understand. He would almost say Nick had been flirting with him but Nick didn't flirt, not with anyone but certainly not with him.

Nick gestured for Stephen to go into the flat first, pushing him to sit on the couch while he rummaged in the kitchen for the large first aid kit he'd started stocking when anomalies became a regular part of his life. He smiled at the sight of Stephen stretched out on the couch like he belonged there.

"Right, get 'em off," he ordered, laughing at the look on his face. "Your shirt and jeans, Stephen. I can't patch you up if I can't get at you."

"Uh yeah, sorry, I was falling asleep," Stephen stammered. "Long day."

Nick just smiled again and waited for him to undress, kneeling by the side of the couch once he was down to his boxers. "They got you good." He reached out to trace a particularly nasty bruise. "What happened?"

"Got stuck in the lift shaft," Stephen said. "Ducked in there to escape from the worms and then realised there was no lift. Of course our new PR lady soon fixed that. Nearly squashed me with it. No one told me being your research assistant would involve lift shafts and huge worms."

"You were in the lift shaft?" Nick almost yelled. "Damn it, Stephen, you get yourself into the riskiest places. You scare the hell out of me some days."

He pulled the antiseptic out of the kit and looked at Stephen's chest. "I barely know where to start and this is going to sting like hell."

"Just get it over with and then I'll take care of yours," Stephen said, laying back and closing his eyes so he wouldn't see it coming. The first touch he felt though wasn't the cloth and antiseptic but something softer, warmer. His eyes flew open and he looked down to see Nick gently trailing kisses over the cuts and bruises.

"What are you doing?" he asked, not trying to get away but not sure how they'd gone from talking about the lift shaft to Nick kissing him.

"Hasn't anyone ever kissed your hurts better before?" Nick asked softly.

"Not since I was five," Stephen said wryly. "Why?" Inside he was praying that Nick wouldn't say it was because he felt guilty that Stephen got hurt.

Nick smiled gently again, not missing the fact that Stephen wasn't stopping him. "Because you need someone to look after you and because I want it to be me. Just let me take care of you for tonight, Stephen."

"Just tonight?" Stephen blurted, cursing himself for it as the words escaped. He didn't want to say anything that would make Nick stop, but he wanted to know what was happening before he let himself fall for another Cutter and got his heart broken again.

Nick looked at him softly. Helen's words back at the anomaly about Stephen promising to do anything if she'd let him had told him a lot about what their relationship had been like. He remembered feeling like that about her too. She'd played both of them for her own twisted ends. He remembered what Stephen had been like after she'd vanished too. He hadn't known Helen was the 'girl who left me' that Stephen had mentioned to explain his depression. Ironic that they'd bonded over their shared grief at Helen's disappearance without him realising it.

He leaned up to rest his hand against Stephen's cheek. He'd only intended this to be one night. Both of them needed someone and he'd take whatever he could get, but Stephen's words made him wonder if it could be more. Like Helen had told him, mocking him in front of Stephen but the words going right over the younger man's head, falling in love with your student is stupid. But they weren't just professor and student any more, that was Connor's role now, Stephen was ... more.

"What do you want it to be?" he asked. "Just tonight and tomorrow we go on as normal? Or something more?" He smiled wryly. "In case you haven't realised yet, I'll take care of you for as many nights as you want, but I'll walk away if you want me to."

Stephen looked at him in shock because no, he hadn't realised that. Helen had pursued him, everything had been on her terms, and he'd easily given into her wishes. He'd assumed Nick would want to control what happened here in the same way and he'd been willing to settle for that with the only difference being this time he'd insist on knowing what those terms were up front.

"Why?" he asked. "I've seen what happens first hand when you give the other person that kind of control and it's not pretty. Why would you do that?"

"Because you're not Helen," Nick pointed out. "Because no matter what, I know you'll be right beside me when I need you. I trust you to watch my back and I trust you here as well. And because you've already had one Cutter try and crush you and I won't let anyone do that again, not even me." He ducked his head and smiled self mockingly. "You don't really think Helen was talking about herself when she said falling for your student is a foolish thing to do, do you? Helen doesn't love anyone but herself."

"Oh," Stephen said softly, leaning back against the cushions again. He kept forgetting how different Nick was from Helen. With her, the whole relationship had been about her needs, her wants; Nick wanted to make it all about him. And not because Stephen was demanding that, but because it would make Nick happy to look after him. He leaned into Nick's touch, rubbing his cheek against the hand like a cat. "I want every night, Nick. If all you were offering was tonight I would have taken it because it would be better than nothing and I'd still be able to be there with you in the morning, but I want more than that. I want you. I want to take care of you too, you know."

Nick smiled openly and leaned closer, brushing a gentle kiss across Stephen's lips. "Let me finish treating your wounds and then you can do anything you want. I'm completely in your hands."

Stephen smiled slowly, confidently. "Oh, you're not going to know what hit you, Professor."

Nick laughed happily. "I'm looking forward to it. I know how ... inventive you can be when you set your mind to something."

He leaned forwards again, keeping his eyes on Stephen's as he started tracing every cut with his lips again, as intent on teasing Stephen as kissing his injuries better. Each cut was kissed and then the antiseptic was brushed over it, making Stephen wince at the sting, but since it was quickly followed by Nick's lips touching a different part of his chest, he didn't mind as much as he thought he would. When every cut had been doctored, Nick put the antiseptic down and started exploring the copious bruises from Stephen's climb through the lift shaft. By the time he was done, Stephen's eyes were half closed and he had relaxed into an easy, boneless sprawl on the couch.

Nick stopped and smiled down at him. "I think I got them all," he teased.

Stephen grinned back. "I have one more ache that could benefit from your expert attention, if you don't mind."

"Really?" Nick tipped his head. "I thought I'd covered everything."

Stephen took his hand and guided it to the bulge in the front of his boxers. "Right about here," he said, moaning as Nick closed his hand around him and stroked him through the material.

Nick slowly pulled the boxers down, sliding them off and tossing them aside. "Hmm, there does seem to be some swelling," he laughed. "Just lie back and let me take care of this." He leaned down and ran his tongue along the length.

Stephen groaned and gripped the couch tightly, trying to stay still and let Nick do whatever he wanted to. Nick licked up and down the whole length until it was glistening, and then he blew a cool stream of air over the head, making Stephen's hips jerk off the couch.

"Evil tease," he gasped.

Nick chuckled. "It's not nice to call someone names when they've got your cock in their mouth."

"If you had it in your mouth I wouldn't be," Stephen complained, his voice tailing off into a groan when Nick responded by taking as much of it in as he could and sucking on it, stroking the part he couldn't reach with his hand. He took Stephen all the way to the brink and then pulled back, squeezing the base tightly.

"Nick!" Stephen growled. "Don't stop."

Nick kissed him again hungrily. "I want you in me," he said. "Do you want to? I can finish you like this if you'd rather not."

Stephen blinked at him again, gathering his scrambled wits. "Was I insane before you changed the past? Why would you think I'd say no to that?"

Nick blushed and laughed. "It's a big step. I didn't know how casual you wanted to keep this."

Stephen sat up and pulled him close, kissing him again, exploring every inch of his mouth before pulling back. "I want you. I want to have you and I want you to take me. I want to get on my knees for you and suck your cock. I want to watch as you do that for me. I want everything in any combination you can think of. Is that clear, Professor, or do I need to write it down for you?"

Nick shuddered and rested his forehead on Stephen's shoulder for a second. "God, you drive me insane, Stephen. Take me to bed. I'm too old to do it on the couch."

"You're not old," Stephen insisted. "And we're going to do it on the couch, against the wall, over your desk, and anywhere else I can come up with. But right now we're going to go to bed because after today's little adventure, I think I'm too old to do it on the couch."

Nick chuckled again, standing up and holding out a hand to pull Stephen off the couch. "Come on then, take me to bed and have your wicked way with me."

Stephen paused and groaned. "Don't say things like that in that accent unless you want me to come and not be able to do anything to you!"

Nick raised an eyebrow. "You like my voice? Hmmm, I'm going to remember that. So I shouldn't tell you I want you to strip me naked and slide deep inside me and make me scream? And I absolutely shouldn't tell you about the fantasies I have of you taking me on my desk."

Stephen groaned again and reached down to grip his cock hard. "I mean it, Nick. If you want me to take you, you have to stop talking!"

Nick let go of his hand and backed towards the bedroom, stripping as he went. Stephen followed him as if they were attached by an invisible cord, unable to take his eyes off Nick as he got naked and then stretched out on the bed, stroking his cock slowly.

"Oh God," he said in a strangled whisper. "Just let me watch you for a minute. You look incredible."

Nick stroked his cock, pulling it slightly to the side as he did, his eyes locked on Stephen. "Do you like to watch? Want me to get myself ready for you? Fuck myself on my fingers so that I'm nice and slick and stretched for you?"

Stephen whimpered and then practically pounced, leaping onto the bed and grabbing Nick's hands, pinning them down and rubbing up against him. "You are mine, Nick Cutter." He kissed him hungrily and then rolled to one side. "Roll over. Your ass belongs to me. I'm the only one gets to fuck it in any way."

Nick moaned and scrambled into position. "Oh yes, all yours, Stephen. Always. Anything you want."

Stephen felt his chest get tight at that open admission. "I swear I will never hurt you, Nick. I'm going to take such good care of you." He leaned down and spread Nick's ass, running his tongue along the crack and making Nick push back eagerly. He teased him for a minute, tracing the hole with his tongue but not dipping inside and then, just as Nick thought he was going to have to beg for him to do something, he pressed the tip of his tongue past the muscle and into Nick's body.

Nick shuddered and pushed back at the warm, wet caress. "Christ, yes, Stephen."

Stephen massaged his ass, slowly sliding his tongue in and out, loving the feeling of power as he made Nick squirm and beg. "One day I'm going to see if I can make you come just like this," he whispered. "But not tonight. I can't spend the time you deserve to drive you insane, Nick. I need you too much. Can I have you?"

Nick moaned again. "I don't want slow. Not tonight. I just want you, inside me. You already have me, Stephen, you've had me for years."

Groaning, Stephen rummaged in the bedside cabinet for the lube. "Going to make you feel so good, Nick." He squeezed the tube and warmed the lube in his hand before coating one finger and carefully pressing it into his body, amazed by how easily Nick took it. "God, Nick, I thought you'd be tighter than this ..."

Nick pushed back. "Want you too much to fight you, Stephen. I'm not going to break. You can go faster you know."

"Pushy," Stephen complained. "I don't want to do anything to hurt you. It's been a long time since I did this and I want you so much I'm scared I'll go too fast."

Nick spread his legs and arched his back. "You won't," he promised. "Give me more, Stephen. I'll tell you if it's too much."

Stephen carefully pushed a second finger into him and then paused. "All right?"

Nick groaned. "You feel good." He pushed back. "More. I want you, not your fingers."

Crooking his fingers slightly, Stephen looked for Nick's prostate. When Nick cried out and shoved back hard, he smiled and rubbed his fingers over that spot again and again until Nick was practically sobbing into the pillow.

"Please, Stephen, please; need you now," he begged, the words going straight to Stephen's cock and making it jerk.

"Christ!" He pulled his fingers out and grabbed a condom, opening it with shaking fingers and hastily applying it to his cock. He squeezed out more lube and then took hold of Nick's hips, pushing just the head of his cock into his body and then forcing himself to hold still and let Nick adjust.

Nick growled and rose up onto his knees, shoving back hard and taking over half Stephen's cock in one move. The sudden stretch made him moan but he still wanted more. He squeezed his ass around the hard flesh filling him. "More, Stephen. You're not going to hurt me. Just take me. I need to feel you."

Stephen cried out and gripped his hips harder. "Damn it, Nick. You'll hurt yourself." He pulled out a little and then rocked forwards, slowly pushing further in with each thrust until his balls were resting against Nick's ass. "You feel incredible."

"Then fuck me," Nick growled, his accent getting ever stronger. "You're a damn tease, Stephen. Stop messing around and fuck me, make me know you're taking me. I want to be able to feel you every time I sit down tomorrow."

Groaning, Stephen couldn't resist any longer and he pulled almost all the way out before slamming back in, changing the angle on each thrust until Nick shuddered around him. Then he concentrated on hitting that spot with every thrust. Reaching around, he took Nick's cock in his hand and stroked it in time with his thrusts.

He was so close, but he wanted Nick to come first. He needed to know Nick was enjoying this as much as he was. "Come on, Nick, just let go for me," he begged. "Show me you want this."

Nick whined and twisted slightly, slamming back to meet each thrust, Stephen's words taking him even higher. He gasped for air, his body slick with sweat as he tried to reach the point of no return. He squeezed down around Stephen and felt Stephen's hand squeezing his cock in return. Squeezing a little harder than was really comfortable, the slight edge of discomfort making it all more real and less like something from one of his fantasies and that's when it struck him. He was here, with Stephen fucking him and it was just perfect. He screamed Stephen's name and shot his seed over his stomach and chest, convulsing around Stephen's cock as he finally came.

Stephen groaned again, the sudden pressure coupled with the sight of Nick going wild under him because of what he was doing making him cry out. He leaned down, wrapping himself around Nick's body and thrust harder, taking him as deep and fast as he could, slamming into him almost brutally as he came and then collapsing on top of him, holding him tightly.

Nick shifted uncomfortably as Stephen squashed him, making it hard to breathe, and he reluctantly pulled out of Nick's body, rolling to one side and pulling the condom off. He tied the end and tossed it into the waste bin.

"Three points," he joked weakly, pulling himself up onto one elbow and looking down at Nick. "Are you all right?" he asked worriedly, helping him roll over onto his back.

Nick smiled up at him. "I'm good. Great even. God, I'm going to feel that every time I move tomorrow."

"Sorry," Stephen said with a wince. "I got too rough there near the end."

"Stop it," Nick ordered. "I loved every minute of it. I don't want to hear any apologies. I like knowing I can make you lose control like that."

Stephen leaned down and kissed him softly. "I'm still sorry you hurt. We're not doing this again until you're recovered."

Nick sighed. "Fine. I guess I'll have to put up with your mother-henning. I'll just have to give you that blow job I was working on earlier when we wake up tomorrow in that case."

Stephen shrugged. "It's a sacrifice but I'll just have to make it," he said with a grin. "And then tomorrow night you can take me. Give me my own ache to look smug about."

Nick laughed. "I think I can manage that. Right now I could do with some sleep though. You're staying, right?"

Stephen nodded. "Until you get sick of me."

"Not going to happen," Nick promised. He yawned widely. "Sleep now. Swing by your place in the morning for some clothing so you don't have to wear the same thing two days in a row."

Stephen kissed him softly. "I'll move some things in here and you can leave some at my place in future." He hesitated, deciding now when they were both half asleep was not the time to tell Nick about Helen's reappearance. "Sleep well, Nick." He closed his eyes and snuggled closer, resting his head on Nick's shoulder.

Nick smiled sleepily and wrapped an arm around him. "You too, love." He pulled him closer and kissed his hair before feeling his own eyes drifting shut as he truly relaxed for the first time since he'd come back through the anomaly into a changed world.


End file.
